Munich Struggling with Linux Transition?

rune2 writes "The Toronto Star has an article up that mentions that Steve Ballmer is gloating about how the Munich transition to Linux and Open Source software isn't going too well." Even if the transition is going poorly, what about when Munich is finally set? Funny how there's no mention of all the future costs of licenses they've already saved themselves from, yet there's a nice plug for the next version of Windows. Last time I checked, Windows' upgrades from one version to the next were not free by any definition.

Comments

There is one positive

[Anonymous Coward]

At least they didn't waste too much money buying software.

Re:There is one positive

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems that the main problem in Munich is with the knowledgebase of the integrators. The equivalent of this problem would selecting the wrong Microsoft Partner to do your rollout.

I would imagine that as experience with Linux grows this problem will be easier to minimize.

Re:There is one positive

[in7ane]

Linux needs to offer more than just lower costs to successfully compete (I would probably point to the lower costs last - it's not like it's a good idea to run your systems on something just because it's cheap). So instead of taking how much they've saved and will save on future licenses it would probably be more beneficial to look at what the problems are and how they can be solved. Not least because similar problems are likely to arise in other organizations switching to Linux.

Re:There is one positive

[Wellspring]

Exactly.

The thing is, the first priority is the value that Linux is providing Munich. Security and stability are big points in Linux's favor. Customization should be another. If we can't offer compelling value, people will smile, nod, say "good for you guys, I'm rooting for you" -- and then plunk down money for the product that fits their needs.

We can't as a community wish away these transaction costs of switching. The whole point Ballmer is making when he highlights stories like these is that Open Source is NOT free.

You need expertise in-house, custom development to meet your needs, tech support, administration, management. All these things are expensive. If Linux is to win, it needs to prove that it isn't just hiding its costs.

I'd like to see the community really engage the guys in Munich to ascertain 1. what the problems have been 2. what we can do (new software, utilities, companies, services) to alleviate these transition pains.

That's what MS does with their customers. If we're to really challenge them, we need to be even more responsive and useful. We have the advantage, but that doesn't mean we're using it.

Re:There is one positive

[Casualposter]

It is telling that Ballmer is gloating over the difficulties of a transition to Linux instead of gloating over stomping the Linux community into the ground with better products and services. The fact is that they are having trouble BUT they are still transitioning.

Change is always costly, Linux transitions have all of the troubles that other software transitions have without the high cost of each liscence.

I agree completely with the proposition that we must strive to provide software support for Linux as the primary focus of our community efforts. The code is free, the support is where we have the opportunity to add value and create wealth.

Re:There is one positive

[dfung]

I agree with this completely.

I personally think the overall complexity of the open source path is probably slightly higher than Windows these days, but on this scale of operation probably not radically different. Pick the wrong Windows integrator (strong on client or server side but not both) and it will be a painful migration.

One problem that I do see is that in strategic deals like this one, Microsoft has an advantage in that the corporation can "fix" a bad integrator choice by flooding the site with the money and knowledge needed to make this work. A big IT consultant can try to do the same thing, but that may require a big internal investment on their part - I'm not sure whether going back to a SUSe or RedHat with problems could create the same effect.

Of course, that's what MS would argue that their value-add is, and I don't know that I would completely disagree. I'm sure they're loading MS commandos into the Microsoft Air Force troop carriers in Redmond, waiting for Munich to ask for help.

Re:There is one positive

[IgnoramusMaximus]

You know, this sort of an oppinion can only come from someone who never spent years in real-life trenches of IT.

It's certainly not easier to use..

Depends on the definition of "easier to use". We customise all user desktops (we use Linux as a terminal server) so that only 5-10 icons are present and those are the only apps the users can access. Easy to use, no confusion. Study after study shows that giving the administrative workers access to all sorts of "accessiores" produces hours of fucking around with screen savers. Web access is restricted to the intranet and few choice sites. No ebay and chatting. Huge increases in productivity and a lot of whining from the spoiled brats when we implement this, usually in the vain of "this sux! On Windows I could play my Backgammon with the dude in shipping all day!". Those who are there to work and make their company successful somehow never complain. Go figure.

Oh and I can just imagine the sort of friction the dudes in Munich are getting from the government workers, I truly sympathise guys.

.. the performance isn't better on average ..

Again depends on the definition. If you are looking to squeeze the maximum from your existing hardware so that your return on investment is maximized, you use Linux. Otherwise you go upgrade all your PCs every 2 years on schedule. The advent of Windows Terminal Services (something Linux/Unix had for ages) made Windows more competetive but thats not how most Windows installations are deployed. We tend to use Linux based Terminal Servers as a primary mode so the hardware requirements on clients are next to nothing.

.. and the support isn't as good.

You cant be for real. I have people with applications on Windows who pay $7.5k in "support contract" fees for their windows software and they call me to rescue them because that wonderful support just works so great. Did you ever call Microsoft for anything? I did a dozen or so times. Last time it was ~$250 US per "incident" (you will not catch me dead with a MS support contract) and after spending 1/2 a day I still didn't get to talk to anyone who could diagnose a BSOD, even though I went to all the trouble of preparing the dumps and messing with the system debugger and symbol files to try to get the call stack extracted so we could backtrack to the offending code. Oh, and that other time when I called after finding out a critical bug in MS SQL only to find out that a) SQL support is ~$350US per incident and its a call-back "less then 48hrs" response time and b) its not a "bug" but it will be fixed in the "next release". I stopped calling MS many years back, simply because when I looked at the results they never provided me any useful assistance.

Windows world suport is not in any shape or form better then that on Linux and unlike Windows apps, I can at least attempt a work around or even a fix since I can program in several languages.

I am starting to find all these people who repeat mindlessly Redmont's propaganda with no actual practical experience in the matter, truly infuriorating.

Nice plug?

[26199]

They spend quite a while discussing the problems Windows has with security, including viruses... how is that a nice plug?

The article seems pretty balanced to me, although it does gloss over one or two points (Munich hadn't already 'made up their mind' when Microsoft made a cheaper offer).

Re:Nice plug?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is management-speak that uses people's ignorance. "More" is comparative. "More expensive" THAN what? Most English speakers seem to have forgotten that comparatives are usually (always?) followed by "than ..." - perhaps because they listen to so many crappy commercials that use "more" without any comparison. See what happens when language is used imprecisely - leaders use it to keep the population confused.

So, Mr. Ballmer, "more expensive" than what? Than keeping their older MSWindows systems? Than was originally budgetted for the transition? Than gold-plating all the computer cases?

So let's try to fix it

[rduke15]

Sounds like a good opportunity to look into why and exactly what isn't going too well, so it can be fixed.

Re:So let's try to fix it

[d00ber]

Amen!!! I didn't see a lot of material on what the problems were though.

* User training?

* Gaps in the user application space?

* Porting in-house applications?

* Database access or porting?

* Windows or other *NIX interoperability?

* Availability of trained admins?

* Cultural problems?

What is it?
Inquiring minds want to know!!

Re:So let's try to fix it

[d00ber]

It seems like this is an extremely important piece of work for a Linux company to get for two reasons:

* It is very high profile - Linux beat Microsoft (not on cost BTW) even when uncle Fester flew in (because uncle Fester flew in) to sell Microsoft.

* This is precisely the type of large rollout that Linux companies need to get a handle on. The company that gets the inside track on this contract will have a wellspring of experience that will translate to thier brand and even into thier product suite.

It seems that Linux companies out to be fighting for this. Yes they have to make money but sometimes a loss leader is called for for strategic reasons.

This sounds pretty strategic to me.

Re:So let's try to fix it

[FooBarWidget]

And what exactly isn't "user friendly" for the common office drone?

- To write a document, click on the OpenOffice.org Writer icon.
- To send email, click on the Evolution Email icon.
- To browse the web, click on the Mozilla Web Browser icon.
- To do anything else, click on whatever icons the company installed for you.

Common office drones don't install software (heck, they're not even allowed to). They don't spend time configuring things because everything is already configured. They don't have to use the commandline.

People always say "no Linux is not userfriendly enough" but they never say what EXACTLY is wrong! It's exactly because of this kind of trollish attitude that critics aren't being taken seriously anymore.

Re:So let's try to fix it

[stewby18]

And I have to say, in the usability realm, open source software on any platform often sucks. The gimp is a popular example.

It is a popular example, but I often wonder how good an example it is. How often, when people say "X is much harder in The GIMP than in Photoshop", do they really mean (without realizing it) "I have been doing X in Photoshop for years, so I know how to do it in my sleep in Photoshop, but I'm not used to the differences in The GIMP".

I'm not saying that The GIMP is as good as Photoshop (I'm just a dabbler in both), or that you didn't run into a real usability problem. But I'm sure that that is the case for many people; an unfamiliar UI can feel like a bad UI at first, but being unfamiliar doesn't mean that it's bad. It means migration can be troublesome, sure, but it doesn't mean that the long-term usability is different.

To back up what I'm saying with some antecdotal evidence: I used to use a several-year old version of Photoshop (site license at my University), and I got along fine doing the little things I did. But when I switched to OS X and there was no license for Photoshop for OS X, I thought "Hey, I've heard that The GIMP is cool, I'll try that". So opened it up and started trying to use it (no looking at a guide, just playing--the same way I'd learned my rudimentary Photoshop skills). I hated it immediately and went back to using the old Classic version of Photoshop. About the time I realized that I was never using it because Classic was interacting badly with Photoshop, the school licensed the OS X version, so I grabbed that--and hated it too! They had changed things around enough in the last couple of versions that I felt just as out-of-place as in The GIMP. So I figured, if I have to relearn things anyway, why not stick with the free software. I looked through a short guide to doing basic stuff with it, played around again, and found it quite easy to use once I made the mental transition that this was a different piece of software, not a different-looking layer on top of Photoshop. Why had just messing around with Photoshop worked, but not The GIMP? Because I learned Photoshop with no expectations, but I had some built-in Photoshop responses when I was first trying out The GIMP.

Again, I'm not a power graphics user, so I don't want a lot of replies telling me that X, Y, and Z are impossible in The GIMP. I make no claims about their relative merits for anyone but myself. My point is that I don't agree with this:

I've used computers every day for 17 years and I couldn't figure something out! This is a sign of a chronic usability issue

Photoshop and The GIMP are very complicated pieces of software, with correspondingly complex interfaces. They are not the sort of program where every menu item, button, and control panel can be self explanatory. It is too much to be purely intuitive; it must be learned and memorized to an extent--it just doesn't feel that way once you've used something for a long time. I wonder how much of your frustration (and thus inability to find what you wanted) was due to a nagging feeling that "this is stupid, it should be easy, I know exactly how to do this in Photoshop".

There is certainly open-source software (and commercial software) with real UI problems. But many people attribute problems in using other systems or programs to bad UI when they are caused by simple lack of familiarity.

No surprise.

[rainer_d]

For those a little bit envolved in this transition, that comes as no surprise.
E.g. some departments are already running AD and have been issued permissions to run this setup for 2 or 3 more years.
Other factors are lots of home-grown VB-apps that need to be ported or converted into Webapps, with the added complexity that there's no budget and virtually no knowledge about how to do that...

Nevertheless, the city will not go back (I hope), because the decision *does* make sense. Just not for Steve Balmer.
But that should come as no surprise, either.

Rainer

Re:No surprise.

[Tabula Rasa]

Any switchover of this kind will run into teething problems. We switched over most of our academic admin office (about 30 computers) to Linux/OpenOffice. Despite the support of two experienced Linux sysadmins and backing from On High, there was considerable grousing that still continues some 6 months later. File opening speeds, minor formatting things, print speeds - anything that might be imagined to be a little worse than the good old Win/Office system. I think it is mostly two factors: resistance to any kind of change, and the loss of freedom to mess around with the system. The slight but obvious user interface issues are a good added excuse.
On the flip side, though: No viruses. No files lost. No idiot using someone else's machine and wiping out data. Automatic remote backup. The sysadmins are happy! Unfortunately these things do not seem to figure in the tally of the staff, even when one of their colleagues who has yet to switch has had all her files scrambled by one of the latest viruses.
In short - it is hard to get people to change. But there are enormous savings, and not just financially.

Security & mental bandwith

[locknloll]

Ballmer said security "occupies a lot of my (mental) bandwidth" these days, and while much still needs to be done to satisfy customers, Microsoft is making "incredible progress" with its 2-year-old Trustworthy Computing strategy.

That's probably the reason why my Windows machine at work has downloaded the same security update about ten times in the last two weeks. Nice to watch progress in the making...

perhaps Note: I am not trolling

[xxdinkxx]

For a city the size of munich its nice to see them trying to use linux on such a massive scale, but any kind of technological roll out is going to have unexpected cost. However,as more people do these roll outs, the costs will come down -- or rather be gauged more accurately. We should all be thanmkful that Munich is willing to ungergoing this projects, as it will help the rest of us understand linux deployment on a largetr scale. Also on a personal side note: this is really to be expected seeing how they are using SuSE. SuSE isnt a terrible distro, but since we can all thank suse for being rpm based (yes i know it can support yum and maybe deb).

Note to Ballmer:

[Valar]

They didn't say it was more expensive than Windows-- they said that it was more expensive than keeping what they had (i.e. having Windows and never upgrading/maintaining it) and more expensive than they anticipated. And I don't know if the Munich government works the same as city governments around here, but it seems to be traditional to severely lowball the costs of projects, just to get them rolling. Later, no one wants to kill a 'city improvement' plan, so everyone grudingly agrees to more funding.

how many..

[gl4ss]

..of those problems are because of they were using ms in the first place?

and how many of them would have existed when trying to move to a newer microsoft platform, and how many of them transition problems would have been significantly bigger if they had later decided to jump off the ms boat(after this round of upgrades and new lock in's from changing fileformats)?

-

There's another

[Alan Partridge]

They're no longer struggling with Windows, like 99% of the world's organisations.

And they'll be pissing themselves laughing next time a big virus hits.

Re:There's another

[FatherOfONe]

I can only speak from my own example.

700+ Macs --- Never had an email virus. Never had an issue with spyware.

100 linux machines -- Never had any virus. Never had any spyware issues.

1000+ windows boxes. Many full time jobs spend doing little but virus removal. Yes we have Norton... Also spyware is a HUGE problem. It has gotton to the point that our clients machines do nothing but have pop-ups and slow down to a crawl.

So in my opinion, switching to ANYTHING non Microsoft Windows will reduce the total cost of ownership after the initial pain of moving. Also, non of these Windows users have administrative access. I will say one good thing about Microsoft Windows, you generally don't have to ask if it is supported, but then again it is almost getting that way with Linux.

Also, do you honestly believe that SP2 will address all the remote secuirty issues of Windows? Would you bet your job on it? I wouldn't...

Primary source please?

[MJArrison]

So, let me get this straight.

A Toronoto newspaper says that Steve Balmer says that Munich is having trouble switching to Linux. Boy, that's great investigative journalism there.

Re:Primary source please?

[Anonymous Coward]

a simple case of sloppy reporting, seems to me. check for yourself:

first source for all things german, heise.de:

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/result.xhtml?url= /n ewsticker/meldung/43485&words=Linux%20M%fcnche n

based, in turn, on this article in computerwoche:

http://www.cowo.de/index.cfm?pageid=267&type=Art ik elDetail&id=80114785&cfid=57927&cftoken=85649319&n r=2&kw=munchen

nothing in there about linux being more expensive (than what?).

main problem seems to be that the head of the project hoped to put together a municipal linux task force, but the municipality isn't freeing city employees to dedicate their hours; since the city coffers aren't brimming, there's now a budget problem for the "refined project" phase they're currently working on.

who publishes the toronto star...?

What's the price of freedom?

[The Tyro]

Answer that one for me, Mr. Ballmer.

They aren't locked into your prescribed update path, at your prescribed price, with your prescribed software... If Microsoft says "like it or lump it," you have no choice, and no freedom.

Yes, linux can theoretically be "free" (as in beer), but everything has update and maintenance costs (even if only in manpower costs)... everything... including windows and linux.

Even if it costs a bit more up front... how much are they going to save in the long run? And how much is it worth to be free to choose another vendor? Another tech support company? Another code monkey to maintain their systems?

Obvious?

[IamTheRealMike]

What do Munch and Ballmer expect? Moving from one version of Windows to another has been the cause of god only knows how many IT budget overruns, and surprise surprise, they are finding that moving everything to Linux is not easy.

Well, duh. That's why Microsoft has a monopoly, right? Ballmer likes to bitch and whine about how it was a "political decision" and how such things are somehow dirty and rare, but he seems to have missed the fact that every decision is political. There's no such thing as a pure business decision.

No matter how many TCO studies you do, no matter how many reports are written by an IT dept doing an evaluation, the final decision is going to be made based on how comfortable somebody is with an idea. Going with Microsoft is safe, it's easy, because everybody else does it. That's a political decision. It's the old "nobody got fired for buying IBM" thing.

The problem with Ballmer is that he sees what he wants to see. Somehow he has to reconcile his beliefs (that Microsoft is better) with reality (people are chomping at the bit to leave them). He does this by saying:

The people who are making business decisions based on where are the applications, what is the value, what is the lowest cost of ownership, we're not losing them.

... while apparently ignoring that TCO includes future costs such as forced upgrades, complying with license audits, working around the inflexibility of their software and so on. The hard to value, intangible costs. So he smears former (and possibly) future customers by writing off their decisions as "political" - a thinly disguised euphamism for "irrational".

There's another thing. Does anybody else have questions about the competency of the Munich guys to be doing such a migration? Why are they doing a crash switch, which is bound to end in tears? Why are there persistant rumours of them using VMware rather than bringing Wine up to speed on their products (which I'd guess works out cheaper in the long run and certainly provides a better desktop experience).

Finally, is it just me or does Ballmer look really evil in that photo?

Isn't it great how

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it great how ALL of the quotes in this article are from Ballmer? Every single one? I mean, gee, they spend a whole half a paragraph on paraphrasing "news reports out of Germany", but then let Ballmer go on for paragraphs and paragraphs without any attempt to analyze what he is saying. Real balanced journalism, that.

How many readers of the Toronto Star, do you think, are going to just glance at that article, see a quote from [someone] saying "All of a sudden it's more expensive now to use the Linux solution than the Windows solution," (with respect, in the article, to... well, they don't say what that quote refers to or what its context was, just that he said it at an expo) after a few paragraphs of talking about unexpected cost increases in the Munich city government, and walk away with the interpretation "It has been more expensive for the Munich city government to use Linux than it would have been to use Windows."

My experiance with Linux

[MooKore 2004]

Linux is the better option. It is cheaper, just not in balmers (thats a currency). When I built my system, I had the choice of Windows (179) or Linux (40 for boxed set), natrualy, I chose Linux, I got all my hardware detected, all the software I needed and of course, all the games I played (some with wine).

Ballmer maybe laughing now, but as more and more organizations switch, it wont be long before Linux DOES cut into Microsoft's profits, and we will see who has the last laugh.

If you havn't tried Linux before, then
Legally get a free copy of Lindows! Lets see Microsoft beat that!

You would think..

[hangareighteen]

That a company that's recently been hammered in the anti-trust area wouldn't
have a president gloating over how hard it is to change away from their
system to a more standards-compliant and open one. I guess they've given
up any sense of decorum a long time ago, but it's still a bit shocking.

Here's the scariest part...

[hehman]

Ballmer, recognizing that virus-infected home PCs pose a risk to business users, said the company is studying how consumers can get software patches automatically when flaws are detected in Microsoft software.

Attention IT managers: the PCs you're in charge of fixing may change their OS behavior at times of their choosing.

TCO is different for governments

[kmonsen]

TCO is different for governments, because the money is spent on german labour, which might otherwise be unemployed. Instead the get an educated workforce.

So to sum it up, they spend the same, but pay germans (so they get some money back), and educate the people. Not really a difficult choice.

Humph.

[starseeker]

"Ballmer said governments that abandon Microsoft are more interested in making a political statement than using the best and most affordable software."

What constitutes the "best" software? Most features? Maybe. Best stability? Maybe. Best security? Maybe.

For some situations and groups, the best software is software the furthers goals like avoiding dependance on a foreign company with a bad track record for business practices and near monopoly control. Like, say, foreign governments. Which are, after all, political institutions. Why wouldn't they make political statements?

Microsoft gets it, all right. They will do their best to make decisions other than for immediate $$ spent look silly, but for some in this world there really is more to it than that. Microsoft knows to fear thinking like this, because it cannot be controlled.

"The people who are making business decisions based on where are the applications, what is the value, what is the lowest cost of ownership, we're not losing them."

At, but there again value and cost of ownership are not always strictly a matter of $$. Frankly, it's a pretty cold world when that is true, and it's one of the things I dislike about the US. In any case, to solve the chicken egg problem of applications first or users first, the users typically have to take the plunge.

Ballmer can chuckle all he likes. What he isn't mentioning is that first adapters always, ALWAYS, have a hard time. Did we make fun of the first people who bought those really expensive first generation DVD players? Do universities shrink away from paying Peoplesoft $$$$$$$$$ for rather unimpressive systems that still need lots of tweaking? (I'm still convinced if a couple of them had hired GNU enterprise with that $$$ everyone would have been better off, but that's another post.) Change is tough. But for each person or group that makes the change, things are ironed out and it gets easier next time around. And as things get easier, a proven track record emerges, and the trail is paved, more people start to go down it.

So sure, Munich is chopping down trees to make a road through the forest right now. But the next time around someone else will have an example to follow, and will also do some more road clearing.

I'm quite sure if Munich had made the decision to switch over to Macintosh, they'd be facing many of the same problems. To a certain extent change is just hard, period. But the thinking here is long term, not short term. The Media reports short term, Microsoft laughs in the short term. But I'm a lot more interested in the long term, when Munich can look at the next upgrade cycle prices for Windows and laugh in their face.

Re:At least...

[cscx]

The article talks about how they don't have the know-how to successfully complete the OS deployment, and you're suggesting that they actually dive into the code and fix OS problems themselves? Hahahah... seriously, I think you are missing the big picture here.

They aren't being truthful

[Perl-Pusher]

The press reports they are talking about say this:

' The migration plan is more complex than simply replacing Windows with Linux, according to an outline provided by the Munich information department. Studies on open-source security, desktop ergonomics and the software components' stability and compatibility with other applications will be included in the process.

But according to Computerwoche and other reports, the city lacks the funds to invest in the planned testing and development of an open-source solution. IBM and Germany-based Linux distributor SuSE are expected to help offset the costs of the migration by supplying technical support and conducting some of the studies that the Munich city council has requested.

Reports in Computerwoche also stated that local vendors who currently code applications for the city were experiencing problems in developing applications for the open-source operating system, since they are more familiar with Windows than Linux.'

Yes it's more expensive to actually worry about security and design system that factors in security needs.

It would much cheaper in the short term to just toss the latest MS product on hundreds of machines and ignore security totally. Nobody need do a study, the answer is MS security is almost non existent.

And the last paragraph speaks volumes about relying on an MS monoculture. Noow those vendors are screwed and any venor who can provide an open source solution for Munich will get there contract.

What about Microsoft roll outs that are expensive?

[TheCeltic]

I work for a fortune 500 company that has done many many large Windows rollouts. We also have done many Solaris and Linux installations. Guess what... Windows is often more difficult, more expensive and less stable than Solaris or Linux. Real "objective" reporting. Sounds like the media is appealing to it's sponsors (Microsoft).

Re:Ironic

[arbour42]

Munich saved tons of money by using RAD tools like Delphi, Access, and VB in the past to build db apps they needed to function - rich client gui apps. Everyone does that. I bet they are running stuff from Delphi 2 and Paradox - 8 years old.

How are they going to rebuild that? Where's the money coming from? And don't say web apps, because it takes MUCH longer to write a db app originally made in Delphi (which is outstandingly fast) and build it in php / perl / jsp. And these web apps are not close to the ease of use of a Delphi or Access app. Linux and open source DESPERATELY need a RAD tool like Delphi with data-bound controls and grids (too bad borland gave up on Kylix, it seems). All other development in the open source world should take a back seat to this. Why not do it in Python - with TCL or PyQT?

I really doubt this migration will go through as planned.

with linux Munich doesn't export business to US

[raque]

One thing that I don't see being noted here is that it's not just how much something costs, but who gets paid. If Munich uses Linux then a lot of the costs stay local, if they use MS then the business is exported. Even if MS uses locals a lot of the money goes to Redmond. With all the bitching about lost jobs we have to remember that other countries have the same problems and Linux is one solution. You can get the best minds around the world working for you, but still keep your business local.

Re:Ironic

[NightSpots]

The problem is that there are no great replacements for Active Directory and Exchange.

You call it proprietary lock-ins, I call it a damn good way to manage a few thousand users.

I've been on both sides here. I've done the OpenLDAP database of users, with OS X desktops an Samba fileservers, Sendmail / QPopper / IMAP mail setups for a few thousand users.

I've also done the Win2k3 servers with AD and Exchange, and WinXP desktops, again for a few thousand users.

The bottom line is that they both serve the same roles: user management, mail, fileserving.

The difference is that while it takes 20 seconds to add a user to Active Directory (complete with Exchange mailbox setup, login script assignment, etc), it takes fussing with LDIF files for OpenLDAP. Eventually we went to web applications to mimic the MS tools, but that again takes time and money. There simply aren't the tools available that make it worthwhile for busy administrators to fuss with OpenSource solutions.

It's difficult to get away from MS tech because MS makes it damn easy to run an enterprise of a few thousand employees. It may be that the IT staff just isn't used to linux (I suppose I benefit from the fact that I grew up on Sun and FreeBSD, which makes it really easy for me to pick up just about any of the common OSes around), but realistically speaking, there's a lot to be said for the enterprise tools that MS offers, even though they cost a lot of money.

I'm still waiting for an open source package that comes close to rivaling Exchange in functionality. I don't see that happening anytime in the near ( 3 years ) future.

Far more likely it is the apps.

[khasim]

"User friendly" isn't the problem. Clicking on an icon is the same. There's just a bit of training so people will know which icon to click on and where it is.

The big problem is that there are lots of little apps that need to be ported. This is the same in any migration. Someone, somewhere throws together a database for some reason and it becomes "mission critical" to that department.

So, you have apps that you knew nothing about....

That need to be ported....

With 100% functionality....

Prior to your roll-out....

And it is probably badly written with no thought to managability or portability or even data integrity....

And THAT is what eats up your budget.

What the problems seem to be

[Jack Hughes]

According to the c't article, the problems centre on:

• Resistance among the user base (people don't like change)
• Vast number of different applications/suppliers to work with
• Lack of support from on-high

None of these problems are specific to linux - but rather to any attempt to introduce change on massive scale. Nowhere are they saying that "linux doesn't work"

Wired Story on Munich Transition

[dpm]

Wired has an English summary of the information in the German press:

http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,6 22 36,00.html

According to the story, here are the major problems, aside from some resistence among city hall staffers:

1. Munich insists on a whole bunch of studies into topics like Open Source security, desktop ergonomics, and software component stability and compatibility as part of the transition, but wants someone else (i.e. IBM and SuSE) to pay for them.

2. Local custom software contractors don't know how to write Linux apps.

Obviously, the first problem has more to do with politics than technology (to paraphrase Ballmer). You can always raise costs by wrapping something in red tape.

The second is a real technical problem, but it also occurs trying to move older Windows apps (i.e. 95, 98) to newer Windows versions. Solution: write Web apps, bozos (that way, if they ever want to go to yet another OS on the desktop, their apps will still work). The real problem is that they still think writing custom client-side apps in *any* OS is a good idea.